We drove to a spot we had heard of where we could fairly quickly gather up quite a bit of rock. We were gathering 6" and smaller (mostly smaller). We used this to line the bottom of where our bond beam would go. We filled in air gaps to keep from losing/using too much concrete. We used some of the rocks to help level the landscape edging. We again had a lot of tweaking to do to make sure the edging was level all the way around and we double checked our bender board as well.
Brent made two soil screens. One is half inch square and the other quarter inch. I placed the larger on top of the smaller and screened the soil we'd dug out when we first began prepping the site. The stuff screened out by the half inch screen was cast aside. The stuff caught by the quarter inch, but not passed through, I put in its own pile. The soil that went through both screens was caught by a tarp and we used that as our aggregate in the concrete mix. Our mix was 5 parts soil, .5 part portland cement and .5 part hydrated lime. Brent mixed this dry in our huge wheel barrow and then put a part of it into a plastic concrete mixing tray he'd bought. That's where he added the water and mixed it. He had the most strenuous of the jobs. I did the soil screening and then the troweling and leveling of the bond beam. My first experience with such and I was kind of worried about getting it level. The levelness around the length/circumference wasn't an issue as we'd pretty much set that up. However, the leveling between the bender board and the landscape edging was something I had to keep checking.
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| Bond Beam |
This is how the bond beam looked this afternoon when we went to check on it. The gray lump in the middle is a tarp over the leftover cement and wheel barrow.
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| Utility ports under bond beam. |
This photo shows a close up of the bond beam going over the top of the utility ports. The rock on the inside of the bond beam was to help hold the landscape edging from bulging out too much.
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| Scalloped edge developed. |
You can see that we had a sort of scalloped pattern developing. It was from the concrete sort of bulging and pushing out the landscape edging. We could have used more stakes. We put heavy rocks in the worst places. In the end, it kind of looks like we did the scalloping on purpose, a decorative bond beam if you will.
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| Rock supporting edging. |
This shows a close up of how we used a rock to help hold the edging in place against the push of the cement. We were getting worried about how much cement we were using.
In the end, we had hauled up 26g of water. We used about 5g per batch mixed (5 batches mixed) - so we used darned near all we brought. We were getting a bit worried about having enough. In the end, we had a little bit of concrete leftover which we used in a few spots in the trench. We were very sore and tired. A late dinner and some extra strength tylenol and we were off to bed.
This afternoon we went up to the site to clean up and haul up some more water. We have been discussing on whether to do a tamped earthen floor, a poured adobe floor or a combination of the two. Tamping uses way less water and should dry faster, but we have noticed that dampness on the soil (being clay) causes it to begin sticking to the tamper. But, gads, all the water that would be needed for a poured adobe floor and then having to mix it and then trowel it all, well it sounds very painful. We're leaning towards a tamped floor right now. Either way, the next few steps are the same. One half to one inch of sand, then a vapor barrier, then another one half to one inch of sand. Lots of sand.....
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